How to LiveJournal

1. How to LiveJournal

2. LiveJournal Is… • Blogging software that allows you to create and continuously update an online journal. • A kind of Content Management System, software that makes Web publishing easy by forcing the content into a template format. • A networked blogging environment where your blog is easily linked to other blogs through LiveJournals’ Friends and Community features.

3. LiveJournal … • Automatically stores your journal entries in a database. • Lets you incorporate simple HTML tags to add links, photos and simple text formatting in your journal. • Has a sophisticated “Friends” system that keeps track of the latest entries made by your friends. • Has an extensive system of community blogs, based on common interests, where individual bloggers may post. Ex: temple_u_goth, west_philly.

4. Set Up a Free LiveJournal Account • Go to www.livejournal.com • Select WELCOME from the main menu, and SET UP AN ACCOUNT • At the CREATE NEW JOURNAL page, select a username. This will be the primary way that people identify you on lj, so choose wisely! • Select a password and enter your date of birth. • Choose a FREE account - you don’t need a paid account for this class. • Type the letters at the bottom of the screen, and press the CREATE AN ACCOUNT button.

5. Set Up a Free LiveJournal Account • Your new blog url will be: http://www.livejournal.com/users/username • You may now enter your information into your blog. Either press the ENTER PERSONAL INFORMATION button, or go to the MANAGE menu and select INFO. • Your personal information appears on your PROFILE page. You can see an example of a profile page at http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=susanjacobson

6. Add a Journal Entry • Go to LiveJournal and log in. • Select the JOURNAL menu, and then select UPDATE. • Enter a title for your journal entry in the TITLE field. • Type your journal entry in the ENTRY field. • At the OPTIONS box, you may choose to make this journal entry PUBLIC (anyone can see it), PRIVATE (only you can see it), or FRIENDS ONLY (only people on your friends list can see it. • You may also enter MUSIC you are listening to, and select a MOOD, if you would like. • Select UPDATE JOURNAL.

7. Review and Edit Journal Entries • You can see your new journal entry at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/username • You may edit your journal entry by going back to your userinfo page, selecting the MANAGE menu, and choosing ENTRIES. • Choose the entry you wish to modify. If it is the most recent entry select MOST RECENT ENTRY. • Edit the entry at the next page, and press the SAVE ENTRY button when you are done.

8. Personalize Your LiveJournal • You can change the format and color scheme of your LiveJournal pretty easily. • Go to the MANAGE menu and select CUSTOMIZE. • You may choose S1 or S2 styles (S1 is easier) • You can see a preview of the S1 and S2 styles here: http://www.livejournal.com/customize/preview.bml • If you know some HTML you can modify the color scheme for your journal by entering new color values • You can choose mood icons, if you would like. Preview here: http://www.livejournal.com/moodlist.bml

9. Add Friends • The Friends feature lets you see all of the journal updates of your friends in the “Friends of” page. • To add friends, go to the MANAGE menu and select FRIENDS, • Select EDIT FRIENDS • Enter the lj username of the journals you would like to add to your FRIENDS list.

10. Add a User Icon • You may create and upload up to 3 user icons. • User icons are images that are no larger than 100 pixels by 100 pixels. • To upload an icon, go to the MANAGE menu and select USER PICTURES. • You may upload an icon from a file on your computer, or enter a URL from the Web. • Icons must be in .gif or .jpg file format.

11. HTML with LiveJournal • HTML = “Hypertext Markup Language.” It is a set of formatting commands that is used to create Web pages. • LiveJournal supports some simple HTML commands that format text, create links to other Web pages, embed images, and link to audio, video and other file formats on the Web.

12. Simple HTMLText Formatting in LiveJournal • LiveJournal supports very simple HTML text formatting: bold, underline, italic text. • LiveJournal also supports basic left, center and right alignment. • All HTML commands (called “tags”) have the same format: <tag> Indicates the beginning of a tag </tag> Indicates the end of a tag. For example <b>The words in between the b and the /b are bold.</b> The words outside of the tags are no longer bold.

13. Make It Bold To make something bold, put it between <b> </b> tags: <b>This is BOLD</b> This is not bold.

14. Make It Italic • To make something italic, put it between the <I></I> tags: <I>This is italic.</I> This is not italic.

15. Underline It • To underline something, put it between the <u></u> tags. <u>This is underlined.</u> This is not.

16. Centering Text and Images • To center text and images, put them between the <center></center> tags: <center>This is centered.</center> This is not.

17. Using Right Alignment • To align text and images to the right, use the <right></right> tags: <right>This is right-aligned.</right> This is not.

18. Using Left Alignment • By default, all text and images in LiveJournal are left-aligned. You don’t need to use the <left></left> tags, but if you wanted to, this is what it would look like: <left>This is left aligned</left> By default, this is also left aligned.

19. Line Spacing • There are two basic HTML tags for line spacing: <p> and <br>. • <p> goes between lines when you want to skip a line inbetween them. • <br> goes at the end of a line when you just want to go to the next line. • Unlike other tags, you do not have to close these with a </br> or a </p>, at least in the world of LiveJournal. • Usually, LiveJournal will format line spacing based on how you use the ENTER key. However, occasionally you do need to use <p> and <br> to get the spacing that you would like.

20. Other Formatting Commands • Because LiveJournal is a Content Management System that uses pre-defined templates, not all HTML tags work as you would expect them to. • <h1> and <h3>, for example, have pre-defined formats associated with them. • If you know additional HTML commands, you can experiment with them to see how they work in LiveJournal.

21. Create a Link If you just want to put a link in your journal, just type a URL: http://www.cnn.com You can also turn a group of words into a link by using the <a href> tag: <a href = “http://www.cnn.com”> Click here for CNN</a> If you want the URL to open in a new window, you can add a target to the <a href> tag: <a href = “http://www.cnn.com” target = “_new”> Click here for CNN</a>

22. Adding Images • You may embed images in your LiveJournal page using simple HTML. • You must first upload your images to a Web server. We will cover this in Lesson 3, if you do not know how to do this. If you have a Temple e-mail account, you have some Web server space. • The code for embedding images in your LiveJournal page is: <img src = “http://unix.temple.edu/~susanj/lj/mebykc.jpg”>

23. Adding Sounds, Video, Flash Animation • LiveJournal does not let you embed audio, video, Flash, Director or any other kind of file format. • If you want to add these elements to your journal, you must link them. • For example, here is a link to a Flash animation: http://unix.temple.edu/~susanj/flash/scrunch2.swf